Vachel Lindsay

Vachel Lindsay was an American poet known for his innovative performances of his poetry, which combined spoken word with music and theatrics. Born in Springfield, Illinois, Lindsay's work often revolved around American history and culture, reflecting his progressive social views. He played a significant role in the early 20th-century American poetry scene, influencing contemporaries and later poets with his dynamic style and passionate delivery.

November 10, 1879

December 5, 1931

English

Vachel Lindsay

Page 1 of 10

A Curse for Kings

    A curse upon each king who leads his state,
    No matter what his plea, to this foul game,
    And may it end his wicked dynasty,
    And may he die in exile and black shame.

    If there is vengeance in the Heaven of Heavens,
    What punishment could Heaven devise for these
    Who fill the rivers of the world with dead,
    And turn their murderers loose on all the seas!

    Put back the clock of time a thousand years,
    And make our Europe, once the world's proud Queen,
    A shrieking strumpet, furious fratricide,
    Eater of entrails, wallowing obscene

    In pits where millions foam and rave and bark,
    Mad dogs and idiots, thrice drunk with strife;
    While Science towers above; - a witch, red-winged:
    Science we looked to fo...

Vachel Lindsay

A Dirge for a Righteous Kitten

To be intoned, all but the two italicized lines, which are to be spoken in a snappy, matter-of-fact way.


    Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong.
    Here lies a kitten good, who kept
    A kitten's proper place.
    He stole no pantry eatables,
    Nor scratched the baby's face.
    He let the alley-cats alone.
    He had no yowling vice.
    His shirt was always laundried well,
    He freed the house of mice.
    Until his death he had not caused
    His little mistress tears,
    He wore his ribbon prettily,
    He washed behind his ears.
    Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong.

Vachel Lindsay

A Net to Snare the Moonlight

[What the Man of Faith said]


    The dew, the rain and moonlight
    All prove our Father's mind.
    The dew, the rain and moonlight
    Descend to bless mankind.

    Come, let us see that all men
    Have land to catch the rain,
    Have grass to snare the spheres of dew,
    And fields spread for the grain.

    Yea, we would give to each poor man
    Ripe wheat and poppies red, -
    A peaceful place at evening
    With the stars just overhead:

    A net to snare the moonlight,
    A sod spread to the sun,
    A place of toil by daytime,
    Of dreams when toil is done.

Vachel Lindsay

A Prayer to All the Dead Among Mine Own People

    Are these your presences, my clan from Heaven?
    Are these your hands upon my wounded soul?
    Mine own, mine own, blood of my blood be with me,
    Fly by my path till you have made me whole!

Vachel Lindsay

A Rhyme about an Electrical Advertising Sign

    I look on the specious electrical light
    Blatant, mechanical, crawling and white,
    Wickedly red or malignantly green
    Like the beads of a young Senegambian queen.
    Showing, while millions of souls hurry on,
    The virtues of collars, from sunset till dawn,
    By dart or by tumble of whirl within whirl,
    Starting new fads for the shame-weary girl,
    By maggoty motions in sickening line
    Proclaiming a hat or a soup or a wine,
    While there far above the steep cliffs of the street
    The stars sing a message elusive and sweet.

    Now man cannot rest in his pleasure and toil
    His clumsy contraptions of coil upon coil
    Till the thing he invents, in its use and its range,
    Leads on to the marvellous CHANGE BEYOND CHANGE.
...

Vachel Lindsay

Above the Battle's Front

    St. Francis, Buddha, Tolstoi, and St. John -
    Friends, if you four, as pilgrims, hand in hand,
    Returned, the hate of earth once more to dare,
    And walked upon the water and the land,

    If you, with words celestial, stopped these kings
    For sober conclave, ere their battle great,
    Would they for one deep instant then discern
    Their crime, their heart-rot, and their fiend's estate?

    If you should float above the battle's front,
    Pillars of cloud, of fire that does not slay,
    Bearing a fifth within your regal train,
    The Son of David in his strange array -

    If, in his majesty, he towered toward Heaven,
    Would they have hearts to see or understand?
    ... Nay, for he hovers there to-night we know,
    Thorn-...

Vachel Lindsay

Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight

(In Springfield, Illinois)



    It is portentous, and a thing of state
    That here at midnight, in our little town
    A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
    Near the old court-house pacing up and down,

    Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards
    He lingers where his children used to play,
    Or through the market, on the well-worn stones
    He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.

    A bronzed, lank man!    His suit of ancient black,
    A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl
    Make him the quaint great figure that men love,
    The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.

    He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.
    He is among us: - as in times before!
    And we who toss and lie awake for long
    Br...

Vachel Lindsay

Aladdin and the Jinn

    "Bring me soft song," said Aladdin.
    "This tailor-shop sings not at all.
    Chant me a word of the twilight,
    Of roses that mourn in the fall.
    Bring me a song like hashish
    That will comfort the stale and the sad,
    For I would be mending my spirit,
    Forgetting these days that are bad,
    Forgetting companions too shallow,
    Their quarrels and arguments thin,
    Forgetting the shouting Muezzin:" -
    "I AM YOUR SLAVE," said the Jinn.

    "Bring me old wines," said Aladdin.
    "I have been a starved pauper too long.
    Serve them in vessels of jade and of shell,
    Serve them with fruit and with song: -
    Wines of pre-Adamite Sultans
    Digged from beneath the black seas: -
    New-gathered dew from the heavens<...

Vachel Lindsay

Alone in the Wind, on the Prairie

I know a seraph who has golden eyes,
And hair of gold, and body like the snow.
Here in the wind I dream her unbound hair
Is blowing round me, that desire's sweet glow
Has touched her pale keen face, and willful mien.
And though she steps as one in manner born
To tread the forests of fair Paradise,
Dark memory's wood she chooses to adorn.
Here with bowed head, bashful with half-desire
She glides into my yesterday's deep dream,
All glowing by the misty ferny cliff
Beside the far forbidden thundering stream.
Within my dream I shake with the old flood.
I fear its going, ere the spring days go.
Yet pray the glory may have deathless years,
And kiss her hair, and sweet throat like the snow.

Vachel Lindsay

An Apology for the Bottle Volcanic

    Sometimes I dip my pen and find the bottle full of fire,
    The salamanders flying forth I cannot but admire.
    It's Etna, or Vesuvius, if those big things were small,
    And then 'tis but itself again, and does not smoke at all.
    And so my blood grows cold.    I say, "The bottle held but ink,
    And, if you thought it otherwise, the worser for your think."
    And then, just as I throw my scribbled paper on the floor,
    The bottle says, "Fe, fi, fo, fum," and steams and shouts some more.
    O sad deceiving ink, as bad as liquor in its way -
    All demons of a bottle size have pranced from you to-day,
    And seized my pen for hobby-horse as witches ride a broom,
    And left a trail of brimstone words and blots and gobs of gloom.
    And yet when I am extra good ...

Vachel Lindsay

An Argument

            I.    The Voice of the Man Impatient with Visions and Utopias

    We find your soft Utopias as white
    As new-cut bread, and dull as life in cells,
    O, scribes who dare forget how wild we are
    How human breasts adore alarum bells.
    You house us in a hive of prigs and saints
    Communal, frugal, clean and chaste by law.
    I'd rather brood in bloody Elsinore
    Or be Lear's fool, straw-crowned amid the straw.
    Promise us all our share in Agincourt
    Say that our clerks shall venture scorns and death,
    That future ant-hills will not be too good
    For Henry Fifth, or Hotspur, or Macbeth.
    Promise that through to-morrow's spirit-war
    Man's deathless soul will hack and hew its way,
    Each flaunting Caesar climbing to his...

Vachel Lindsay

An Explanation of the Grasshopper

The Grasshopper, the grasshopper,
I will explain to you: -
He is the Brownies' racehorse,
The fairies' Kangaroo.

Vachel Lindsay

An Indian Summer Day on the Prairie

            (In the Beginning)

    The sun is a huntress young,
    The sun is a red, red joy,
    The sun is an Indian girl,
    Of the tribe of the Illinois.


            (Mid-morning)

    The sun is a smouldering fire,
    That creeps through the high gray plain,
    And leaves not a bush of cloud
    To blossom with flowers of rain.


            (Noon)

    The sun is a wounded deer,
    That treads pale grass in the skies,
    Shaking his golden horns,
    Flashing his baleful eyes.


            (Sunset)

    The sun is an eagle old,
    There in the windless west.
    Atop of the spirit-cliffs
    He builds him a crimson nest.

Vachel Lindsay

At Mass

    No doubt to-morrow I will hide
    My face from you, my King.
    Let me rejoice this Sunday noon,
    And kneel while gray priests sing.

    It is not wisdom to forget.
    But since it is my fate
    Fill thou my soul with hidden wine
    To make this white hour great.

    My God, my God, this marvelous hour
    I am your son I know.
    Once in a thousand days your voice
    Has laid temptation low.

Vachel Lindsay

Beyond the Moon

[Written to the Most Beautiful Woman in the World]


    My Sweetheart is the TRUTH BEYOND THE MOON,
    And never have I been in love with Woman,
    Always aspiring to be set in tune
    With one who is invisible, inhuman.

    O laughing girl, cold TRUTH has stepped between,
    Spoiling the fevers of your virgin face:
    Making your shining eyes but lead and clay,
    Mocking your brilliant brain and lady's grace.

    TRUTH haunted me the day I wooed and lost,
    The day I wooed and won, or wooed in play:
    Tho' you were Juliet or Rosalind,
    Thus shall it be, forever and a day.

    I doubt my vows, tho' sworn on my own blood,
    Tho' I draw toward you weeping, soul to soul,
    I have a lonely goal beyond the moon;
    Ay...

Vachel Lindsay

Blanche Sweet - Moving-picture Actress

(After seeing the reel called "Oil and Water".)



    Beauty has a throne-room
    In our humorous town,
    Spoiling its hob-goblins,
    Laughing shadows down.
    Rank musicians torture
    Ragtime ballads vile,
    But we walk serenely
    Down the odorous aisle.
    We forgive the squalor
    And the boom and squeal
    For the Great Queen flashes
    From the moving reel.

    Just a prim blonde stranger
    In her early day,
    Hiding brilliant weapons,
    Too averse to play,
    Then she burst upon us
    Dancing through the night.
    Oh, her maiden radiance,
    Veils and roses white.
    With new powers, yet cautious,
    Not too smart or skilled,
    That first flash of dancing
    Wrou...

Vachel Lindsay

Buddha

    Would that by Hindu magic we became
    Dark monks of jeweled India long ago,
    Sitting at Prince Siddartha's feet to know
    The foolishness of gold and love and station,
    The gospel of the Great Renunciation,
    The ragged cloak, the staff, the rain and sun,
    The beggar's life, with far Nirvana gleaming:
    Lord, make us Buddhas, dreaming.

Vachel Lindsay

By the Spring, at Sunset

    Sometimes we remember kisses,
    Remember the dear heart-leap when they came:
    Not always, but sometimes we remember
    The kindness, the dumbness, the good flame
    Of laughter and farewell.

                    Beside the road
    Afar from those who said "Good-by" I write,
    Far from my city task, my lawful load.

    Sun in my face, wind beside my shoulder,
    Streaming clouds, banners of new-born night
    Enchant me now.    The splendors growing bolder
    Make bold my soul for some new wise delight.

    I write the day's event, and quench my drouth,
    Pausing beside the spring with happy mind.
    And now I feel those kisses on my mouth,
    Hers most of all, one little friend most kind.

Vachel Lindsay

Page 1 of 10